To research the city along those weaves is the point of departure of "El nudo".

Each weave is being seen from the perspective of a symbolic person: The Man, The Bird, The Frog, The Dog and The Demon.

The Man symbolizes the artificeDuring three different urban development plans (1933 by Karl Brunner, 1947 by Le Corbusier and 1959 by dictator Rojas-Pinilla) which were started by never finished, the former core of the republican city was left to dilapidation: „San Victorino“, „San Bernardo“ and „Santa Bárbara“. The symbolic person The Man is inspired on those districts. He lived there until 1948 and used the tramway and the train to go to the suburbs of the city. We find his traces today in places like the old "Café St. Moritz" or the old shopping passage "Hernández". His main attribute is the artifice. Light and texture of his images are the colors of the night.

The Bird symbolizes the natureThe Bird is made out of different species and therefore assumes contrasting symbols: flower and trash, life and death. Life through hummingbird, bluebird, cardinal-bird and greenfinch, living in gardens and backyards of districts like „La Merced“, „Palermo“, „Nicolás de Federmán“, „Belalcázar“ and „Teusaquillo“. Death through the rave-vulture, the sparrow hawk and the yellow-headed eagle, that overflows the riversides of Bogotá River, the garbage dumps and the misery of people living and working there. His main attribute is the nature are his colors those of sunrise and morning.

The Frog symbolizes the holyUntil the XIX Century the marshland at the plateau of Bogotá were the water link between the rivers from the East Mountains and the Bogotá River in northwest. As part of this ecosystem the frog is found today in remaining swamps and ducts.After a chronic from Tomás Estevez and Adela Chacín, the tableland of Bogotá was a central trade point for agricultural products at the time before the conquest. The Indians came from warmer regions at the east across the paramo of Choachí and enter the tableland at "Boquerón" along the San Francisco River, today the center of city. Other groups came from the west along the Bogotá River, and other came across the Paramo of Sumapaz.

The Frog is therefore linked to the Indian, and his sight is that of the Indian arriving to the city across the paramo and along the rivers and following the water path through underground ducts. The Frog lives in this buried city, the holy-syncretic base of the contemporary city, a mixture of faith and superstition. The buried city is symbol of a lost religiosity in which nature, like the nut tree exterminated by Spanish conquerors, had sacral attributes. The Frog sees also the reflections of the city in the surface of water at districts where the marshland is pushed back through uncontrolled construction. His time is the afternoon.

The Dog symbolizes the madnessThe Dog was inspired by the homeless persons in Bogotá. Begging, roaming around with their dogs or recollecting paper and glass in their wooden cars, the homeless people are eternal inhabitants of the streets. Homelessness in Bogotá is related to extreme dereliction and a characteristic urban form of madness. The main attribute of The Dog is to roam around. His time is midnight.

The Demon symbolizes the multiplicityThe difficulty to find The Demon as a symbol isolated from all other symbolic persons reveals his main attribute. In an early stage of the project, as we tried to sort photographs of the city after symbolic persons, we noticed that the images of the devil (high tension lines) were present in almost all photographs. The living, real city was revealed as inextricable clash of different layers. The Demon is therefore the most difficult symbol because his logic is that of the city itself, its ambiguity, the multiplicity of forms. In the person of The Devil all other symbolic persons clash. His specific modern attribute is ubiquitousness.

Nudos (knots) are the places in the city where the ways of persons and symbols cross, where their continuity brake and deform each other, where persons become meaningful and visible. The knots are visible signs. They are and part of a typological system and are being related to a concept, similar to the I-Ching, where hexagrams are related to concepts.

Therefore the method of the video is to define a "grammar": that means to identify visible signs of the city, to put them in relation to each other and thereby to make "sentences" about the city, to name it.

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Ulixes / Kassandra is a study on language through musical and pictorial means. The task was to develop musical and pictorial material according to the attributes of the mythological characters Kassandra and Ulixes from the point of view of their relationship with the word.

The starting point was an essay from Herfried Münkler, "Odysseus und Kassandra", (in “Politik im Mythos”, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl., Frankfurt, 1990). Münkler analyses the political aspects of the myths where Cassandra and Ulixes appear to him in opposite relation to one another and to words.

Cassandra’s words were nor understand, were not heard. Her speech was enigmatic, "out of range". She offered a truth that people didn’t want to hear. A poetical language?

Ulixes’ words were efficient, clear, simple, his speech was heard, his advice was followed. He was the master of deceit, of astuteness. He offered a method to achieve a goal. A political discourse?

Ulixes/Kassandra extracts those characteristics to generate the musical text and the images.

The 153 drawings and paintings of Lisa Kunit are projected on two screens behind the musicians. The sequences of images are synchronized to the music using midi signals from the percussionists. The computer system process the signals to control the projectors.

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ProjectionVideo beamer projection with a resolution of 800*600 pixel and sound diffusion in CD quality (44kHz – 16bit, Stereo) direct from computer. It can also be projected as a video in DV format.

Visual layerThe development of the 12 fragments is based on the principles of 12-tone composition. Each fragment uses different forms of representation. The order of single visual elements in a fragment follows a scale of 12 units. The row as methodical tool is the base for visual and acoustic composition. The changes of the single visual elements take place according to their position on the scale. In this way the scale determines near and far, focused and unfocused, dark and bright, big and small, more or less, etc.. Transitions from one position to another can be abrupt or smooth. The main scope of the work is the transfer and application of a method of musical composition to a visual model. (Walter Bohatsch)

Acoustic layerThe acoustic proposition for each fragment was developed in constant dialog with the visual part and seek for a rigorous interpretation of the selected model. In some cases visual propositions were made after musical ideas. The sound material used correspond in its reduction to the basic geometric figures used as graphic material. The idea of the 12-tone row has been consciously implemented with the means of electroacoustic and computer music. Instead of pitch as a the main parameter, other features like speed, modulation index, density of grains, room position, room quality, bandwidth, quality of noise of historical recordings, number of accumulated layers, etc. have been used to build up scales. The 12-tone row as a historical object is seen here in a post-serialist point of view, out of the perspective of a "sampling culture". (Germán Toro Pérez)